Mountain of inferences’ blasted at Taylorville doctor’s trial

Thursday

Apr 17, 2014 at 6:35 PMApr 17, 2014 at 10:22 PM

By Dean OlsenStaff Writer

A Taylorville doctor’s attorney asked a federal judge Thursday not to be swayed by a “mountain of inferences” alleging that the doctor and his wife defrauded the government out of more than $100,000 in Social Security Disability payments.

But a federal prosecutor, in closing arguments at the bench trial of Dr. Vernon Klinefelter and his wife, Geraldine, said there was clear evidence of the Klinefelters’ “lying, cheating and greed.”

“Good people make bad choices,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Bass told District Judge Richard Mills. “Some good people make criminal choices.”

Mills, who presided during the almost two-week trial, said he will issue a verdict at 2 p.m. April 29 in Springfield’s U.S. District Court.

Vernon Klinefelter, 62, and Geraldine Klinefelter, 60, a nurse practitioner, practiced together at Taylorville’s Abundant Life Medical Clinic when a federal indictment says they carried out a criminal scheme to fool federal officials from 2005 to 2007 into thinking Vernon deserved SSD benefits.

They are charged with felony counts of wire fraud, failure to notify the Social Security Administration of Vernon’s work status and making false statements — all so they could receive Social Security benefits.

If convicted, they could face prison terms of up to 30 years and fines of $1 million.

But prosecutors said Klinefelter and his wife gave differing, and in many cases, false statements to Social Security officials, state officials, Taylorville Memorial Hospital and other people about the doctor’s activities so the couple could keep the clinic running and receive disability payments.

“What he was not was ‘completely disabled,’” Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Hansen said. “The statements he made about the scope of his work were totally false.”

Bass added: “It’s all about a motive to get money. Everything worked to their benefit.”

However, lawyer Thomas Finks, who represented the retired family physician, argued that the inferences federal authorities were making are not enough to prove criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

Finks said the couple cooperated fully with investigators and “have no history of deceit or dishonesty.”

Hansen said the Klinefelters’ scheme officially began in March 2004, when they started what became a successful application for SSD benefits. But Hansen said the scheme may have taken root several years earlier, when the Klinefelters applied for SSD benefits for Vernon the first time in 2000 and were denied in 2001.

“They had been denied once,” Hansen said. “They knew the system.”

Hansen said the Klinefelters, in the initial application in 2004, reported to Social Security that Vernon wasn’t working at all and was seeing no patients. That statement was false, Hansen said.

Later that year and before Social Security decided to award benefits, the couple did disclose that Vernon was working a limited schedule in the clinic — two afternoons a week and seeing only a handful of “carefully selected patients.”

But Hansen said the Klinefelters, both highly skilled professionals, failed to tell Social Security that he was also admitting patients to the hospital, attending meetings at the hospital, serving on the board of the Christian County Department of Public Health and working as the supervising and collaborating physician for his wife and Abundant Life Medical Clinic.

Without that participation by Vernon Klinefelter, his wife couldn’t legally practice, and the clinic would have had to close, prosecutors said.

All of that information would have led to Social Security denying disability benefits in the beginning, prosecutors said.

Finks said the Klinefelters may have made honest mistakes in the application process, and it’s possible that a key Social Security worker who helped the couple file the 2004 application may not have fully recorded everything told to her by Geraldine about Vernon’s activities.

“The system is ripe for misunderstandings,” Finks said.

It’s even possible that Vernon didn’t deserve SSD benefits, Finks said. But he said the Klinefelters didn’t lie.

The investigation of the Klinefelters was biased from the start, Finks said.

He said an agent from the Social Security’s Office of the Inspector General, who interviewed the Klinefelters at their rural Taylorville home in 2007, never asked them to explain the details that Hansen alleged the couple kept secret about Vernon’s work.

“They didn’t have that opportunity to explain themselves,” Finks said.

Prosecutors didn’t have a chance to ask the Klinefelters about those matters during the trial. The couple decided not to testify in their own defense.